BAE Systems has signed a contract with the Danish Ministry of Defence Acquisition and Logistics Organisation (DALO) for the Mid-Life Upgrade (MLU) of the Danish CV90 fleet, ensuring the vehicles’ performance for many years to come.
This MLU contract follows the previously signed framework agreement regarding repair and maintenance services.
Under the contract, the Danish CV90 infantry fighting vehicles will be integrated with the new D-series turret, a “leap forward in design and functionality which provides significant improvements in vehicle balance and new ways to introduce a variety of weaponry for increased lethality”.
“I am very pleased to sign this contract for Mid-Life Update of the Danish CV90 fleet. It is an important upgrade of one of the Army’s most important weapon systems. As the manufacturer of the vehicles, BAE Systems Hägglunds has a great knowledge of the capability, and the upcoming upgrade will bring the vehicles back to a state-of-the-art platform that will ensure it is equipped for future operations,” said Lieutenant General Kim Jesper Jørgensen, director of DALO.
“These upgrades will provide Danish CV90 crews with improved protection and increased combat efficiency, all while securing the functionality of the Royal Danish Army’s existing fleet of CV90s,” said Tommy Gustafsson-Rask, managing director of BAE Systems Hägglunds, which designs and produces the CV90 family of vehicles.
The upgrades include equipping the Danish CV90s with rubber tracks that both decrease the vehicle’s weight, freeing up payload for the addition of new systems, as well as reduce noise and vibrations, to minimise long-term bio-mechanical impact on crew and reduce crew fatigue.
The upgraded vehicles will have an anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) and Defence Aid Suite (DAS) sensor system—increasing both the lethality and protection of the Danish troops.
The delivery of the program is planned between 2026 and 2029 and will be executed in close cooperation with Danish industry and partners.
The platform we should have bought…
Totally agree.
For recce or as a Warrior replacement?
Good evening Sir.
Both
Exemplo Ducemus.
Thanks DB. I was very content with the Warrior upgrade programme (WCSP) in what it would deliver and the fact that it was the best value option to continue with IFVs for the armoured infantry – but I was no fan of how the programme was run. Complex AFVs should be upgraded on a regular basis not when a vehicle is in its last one third of its service life. The upgrades should have been done in 3 tranches over time – first upgrade should have been the protection one, then the lethality one then the electronic architecture one –… Read more »
I always love reading your replies Sir – wealth of experience feeding into them is immeasurable.
Unfortunately, Defence is going to go into a world of pain with Labour in power, and I’m not slating Labour, however, we are beholden to the NHS monster that is out of control and will wreck public finance, even in our generation.
Should there ever be a time to keep National Insurance, it is now and hypothecate revenue to expenditure; Jonathan may disagree, but at least Defence would have protection from the ravages of past tory misgovernment.
Thanks for the kind words, DB.
I have a fair bit of time for John Healey – he has made an effort to master his brief and he does hold the Government to account with some fair questioning.
But there is so much wrong with the NHS, Social Care, Transport, Housing, Education – that a Labour Chancellor will want to spend big money in these areas.
It is doubtful if there will be any real increases in money for Defence, unless and until there is real, very significant and sustained growth in the economy under Labour.
With out a doubt but two late now ,have go along with Ajax and hope for the Best 🤔
Meanwhile US Army will put Ironfist APS in some of their Bradley IFV.
We should have bought this not the ajax family
To be honest, there’s not much wrong with Ajax as it was; it was the MoD insisting on hundreds of modifications that made it so expensive and over-complicated.
Had we bought them off-the-shelf as they were there wouldn’t have been a problem.
MoD procurement is seriously f*cked.
The problem is no one else will buy ajax so when the build is finished the assy line will close as it did for As90 and spares cost will be high whereas cv90 is used by a number of countries so there’s always a ready supply of parts . I’m hoping they purchase k9 A2 as this is going to be widely used
Oh, I fully agree re: CV90. And K9A2 as well, actually. Might as well use a more widely-produced one.
Makes me think, personally, we should scrap Chally 3 and either buy Leopard 2A7s (I think read somewhere that the owners of Leopard said they’d build a UK-based factory to build them if we did) or go in on the new European tank design.
I think the Army, specifically, should be buying off-the-shelf with the only modifications being translating instructions and labels on buttons into English.
The already buy all their hgv trucks from either oshkosh and man no reason why we don’t buy lepoard and put our own armour on it they’re already ditching the more accurate rifled barrel so we can use other armies tank ammo
Several reasons why we are not buying Leo2, the main one being that MoD is contracted to buy CR3 from RBSL!
Use of other armies tank ammo is a minor point. We have not made a habit of using defence stores and combat supplies such as ammunition from other countries in the past. I don’t recall a single occasion when we did that when I served in BAOR alongside many other countries.
I also served in boar for many years in the artillery on M109 and we regularly fired american german and Canadian 155mm ammo. Germany and france are going to develop a new tank jointly I see no reason why Britain shouldn’t get involved with them
Thanks for the info on firing ‘foreign’ ammo back in the day – I had never heard that before.
We are observors on the Franco-German tank project, which seems wise but others are luke warm (Italy pulled out?) and it will not deliver a tank in the right timeframe for us – we will have CR3 from 2027 to 2050 or so? It remains to be seen if it will be a radical design.
No worries we still use a combination of American and UK ammo on As90
I wonder why we use US ammo – BAE make 155mm in Blighty.
The American HE shell is cheaper than our own just a matter of cost
Sir
I’m being flippant, but, do you remember the Falklands and where the Sidewinders came from 😉
Heads up, it wasn’t our stocks.
Don’t think I ever said that we did not get ‘foreign assistance’ with the Falklands conflict. We also got aviation fuel from the Yanks at Ascension (mainly for the Vulcans and Victors) and supposedly some sattelite imagery from ‘a Nordic country’.
The point being made was about naval ships, escorts in particular, as I recall.
Scrap the Chally 3 that MoD is under contract for? Pay huge cancellation charges to RBSL? Where do you then get money for Leo2 purchase from? HM Treasury would not allocate a penny if MoD said the army no longer needed (Chally3) tanks. Have you seen the ease with which Leo2s have been destroyed in combat? – Chally 3 has far better armoured protection. How quickly could ‘the owners of Leo 2’ (Krauss Maffei Wegmann) sign a contract with MoD and build a UK factory, then build hundreds of tanks? We get our first CR3s in 3 years time. You… Read more »
Ajax as it was, the ASCOD, was an IFV. We needed a recce vehicle. Of course it needed modifying. Also the armour level and the cannon on the original was insufficient.
Then surely we should have either bought a dedicated recce vehicle off the shelf or developed our own from scratch that met our requirements – for the cost of Ajax, we might as well have built our own.
Steve, I wonder if British Industry has lost the expertise to successfully design and build a complex AFV from scratch.
The last AFVs built from scratch in the UK were probably:
a. Titan, Trojan. Contract Award to Vickers Defence Systems in 2001. Built in Newcastle by BAE and in service 2007.
and
b. Terrier. Contract Award to RO Defence in 2002. Designed 2002-5. Prototypes produced 2005. Production models built by BAE in Newcastle 2010-2014. ISD 2013.
Interesting about the rubber tracks- I’d like to see the testing on them first, but seems on the face of it to be a legit upgrade for our Ajax. I presume that the weight of CH3 is too high for rubber tracks? I know a few people have said we should have gone with this over Ajax, but there’s nothing to say that we wouldn’t be in the same place we are now. Ajax is a custom modification of an in-production IFV (ASCOD II), as it would have been if we’d used the CV-90 as a base vehicle. I’ve not… Read more »
These band tracks are made by the Canadian company Soucy. They were operational tested by Norwegian CV90s in Afghan. These tracks can carry a load up to 45t so far. A long way off from being used by a MBT. They performed better than expected. Having firstly lasted longer durability wise than expected. If I remember correctly there were three CV90s with the tracks fitted. One of the test vehicles did suffer from an IED attack. Which did break the track. Along with ripping off a road wheel. Soucy provided a field splice kit. That allows the broken track to… Read more »
The Norwegians seem happy with their CV90 recce variants, and in service long before Ajax.
Even if the British Army had gone with the CV90, they still would have messed it up. ASCOD was a mature platform, but of course it had to be a bespoke job, that ultimately led to massive delays.
To be fair, the ASCOD base vehicle did not meet the armoured requirements. Ajax is a level above a theatre entry standard Warrior. Which is no mean feat and has required a completely new armoured package design. But it does mean that the vehicle is protected from 30mm APFSDS rounds. Which is expected to be the main threat it faces. Sadly the better armour comes at the cost of added weight, which brings its own problems with suspension and drivetrain, something that should have been accounted for at the design stage. Of course it would be nice to know why… Read more »
I am not aware of any competition trials to determine a winning bid. Neither BAE nor GDUK offered a full working prototype of a recce vehicle for one on one trials. Both were paper projects. Your question still stands. Why was the GDUK bid deemed superior to the BAE bid? Jobs for Wales, allied to dislike of BAE? A political decision.
I thought they did look at and trial the base vehicles though? I wonder what would have happened if both Companies would have had to submit a small fleet of trials vehicles. Letting the Army decide on the winner based on the test vehicles performance etc?
BAe did say if they won the contract, the old Vickers plant in Newcastle or Leeds, would be used to build the family of Ajax, Ares etc. Though I can’t remember if these were from assembled kits or from scratch?
I think a trial of the base (non-recce ie IFV) vehicle would not prove very much and I had not heard that that had been done.
Apparently BAE did not say at the outset that they could offer manufacture or assembly of CV90 recce at one of their UK plants ie that they said this too late for it to be taken into consideration.
You don’t think Industry played a part in mucking up Ajax?
BAE did not mess up the CV 90 with a 120 mm gun on, expect would have required more engineering work than a 40 mm gun ! Seems the GD M10 Booker prototype based on ascod had cooling issues , gun fume issues and more vibration than the Americans would like. To be fair not as bad as AJAX , this may be because they changed the suspension for hydro-pneumatic, seems you can learn from mistakes as fume extraction system and cooling improvements have been made !
In a few years time will our Infantry in their shiny new Boxer vehicles be looking enviously at the Danish infantry in their mature, upgraded CV90 IFVs?
IT will be good betting odds 🤔